A Night of Violence…Against Oakland Protesters

Media narratives have been full of questions about violence on November 2nd, the historic Oakland general strike where tens of thousands of bay area residents convened on downtown Oakland throughout the day, and then shut down the port in act of non-violent civil disobedience.

Several people were hurt on Wednesday, its true. But they were all protesters, and they were all hurt by police, or, in one case, people in opposition to the event. Despite the media refrain of violent protesters, no one was hurt by protesters on Wednesday night.

Kayvan Sabeghi, who by all accounts was simply in the area of the police raid on Wednesday night, was severely beaten by police and jailed. Though his spleen was ruptured, and he could barely stand, Sabeghi was denied medical attention in jail, and was forced to call an ambulance when he was released several hours later. He remains in intensive care.

Earlier in the evening, two protesters on Broadway were run down by a driver. Though other protesters managed to halt the car and called police over to deal with the situation, the BART police officer who responded, incredibly, allowed the driver to leave–even though witnesses said the driver tried to leave the scene of the incident and then tried to switch places with his passenger. The protesters were taken to Highland Hospital with undisclosed injuries.

Other protesters were hurt by police that night according to media reports, just as they were in similar incidents on October 25th. We don’t know their names, or the context of the incidences, though. Its obvious that both media and police care more about broken windows and graffiti than they do about human lives. Ironically, the damage that incensed them so has been largely repaired. The windows have been replaced, or are in the process of being replaced, and the grafitti has been cleaned. But protesters hurt by real violence are still recuperating.

yeah but breaking the windows of internal affairs is not going to get the investigation done any quicker, lameasses. And you forgot to mention the protesters that were hurt by people in black masks. like the girl that was punched in the face for trying to ask someone to stop breaking up concrete. This article is as much propaganda as the media talking about the violent protesters, if not more so.

I’m not aware of this “girl punched in the face”, so if you have some evidence of the incident, please provide it with a link. As you’ll note, I linked everything I posted to an article from a mainstream source. There are no documented instances of violence from protesters on Weds in the media as far as I know. I’m sure they would be reporting them if they’d happened. What you mistake for propaganda is actually the process of posing an informed argument with evidence. It doesn’t look like you value that approach very much.